Devil’s Slide: A new trail on a well-worn path

Devil’s Slide, the mountainous stretch of coastline between Pacifica and Montara, is a graveyard of transportation infrastructure. The Tom Lantos tunnels, opened last year to carry Highway 1 through the area, are at least the fifth attempt since the 19th century to build a stable north-south route through the steep, landslide-prone cliffs, and that’s not even counting the bankrupt railroad and the planned but never-built freeway. The persistent difficulty faced by road-builders is, however, a boon to hikers and bicyclists. The old routes, which proved impractical for motorized traffic, have been converted to hiking and biking trails.

The newest old route opened this past Thursday as the Devil’s Slide Trail (PDF), the 1.3-mile stretch of highway bypassed by the tunnels. San Mateo County spent nearly a year transforming the highway into a trail, restriping the road with designated bicycle and pedestrian lanes and building entrances, parking lots, and restrooms at each end.

Midway through the Devil’s Slide Trail. Photo: Brian Coyne

The natural beauty of the area is astonishing. The trail alternates between narrow defiles and wide-open views of the ocean. The view will be familiar to anyone who took Highway 1 before the tunnels opened, but being there on a bike or on foot, rather than in a car (or on a bike or on foot with cars buzzing by), completely transforms one’s experience of the Slide. Now that the route is a trail, you can actually stop and admire the waves crashing on the rocks and the towering green hills just inland, listen to the sea birds perched on the rocks offshore, and smell the salt air. The effect is, in that sense, similar to San Francisco’s Sunday Streets, where people walk around their own neighborhood streets surprised, seeing them afresh with motorized traffic gone.

Near the southern end of the Devil’s Slide Trail. Photo: Brian Coyne

The trail’s one downside, at least for the moment, is access. On the south side, a narrow, shoulderless 1.8-mile stretch of Highway 1 separates the trail from Montara, and, on the north side, a .7-mile stretch of steep, equally narrow highway separates the trail from easy access to Pacifica. State and county governments are working on plans to bridge these gaps, but these connector trails are still several years away at best. Bicyclists who are comfortable sharing the road with traffic will be fine on these sections with some care, but new or traffic-averse bicyclists will likely find them unpleasant. Fortunately, Pacifica is running a weekend shuttle bus between Pacifica and the Devil’s Slide trailhead, and the SamTrans Route 17 bus now stops at the trailhead as well.

A great way to visit the Devil’s Slide Trail by bike from San Francisco is to pair it with one of the older former routes through the mountain: San Pedro Mountain Road. San Pedro Mountain Road opened to great fanfare in 1915, when it replaced the notoriously dangerous Half Moon Bay – Colma Road, a route that featured 25 percent grades (which would place it on a top ten steepest list even in San Francisco) and signs sternly warning motorists to go the long way via San Mateo. San Pedro Mountain Road avoids steep grades with dozens of switchbacks, climbing from Higgins Way in Pacifica up to nearly 1000 feet before winding down to Montara. San Pedro Mountain Road was replaced in 1937 by the route that today is the Devil’s Slide Trail and was originally the short-lived Ocean Shore Railroad, but San Pedro Mountain Road is still open to bicyclists, hikers, and equestrians. It was originally paved but today is a mix of crumbling concrete, dirt, gravel, and tree roots, often only a few feet wide.

San Pedro Mountain Road. Photo: Brian Coyne

San Pedro Mountain Road. Photo: Brian Coyne

Bicyclists accustomed to zipping along smooth roads won’t care for this route, but if you’re willing to take it slow, share the way with hikers and horses, and walk the bumpiest bits, it’s passable even on skinny tires. The spectacular views, down to the ocean, north to the city and the Golden Gate, and east and south into the green mountains of the peninsula, along with the banks of wildflowers hemming in the trail, reward the slow progress you’ll make here. As you ride through these beautiful, fragile hills, keep in mind that Caltrans very nearly built a six-lane freeway through the area, and only a hard-fought, decades-long campaign by local activists prevented it. This ride is made possible both by the failures of road-builders and the successes of environmentalists.

Bicyclists coming from San Francisco can ride to Pacifica, take San Pedro Mountain Road south to Montara and then loop back north to Pacifica on the new Devil’s Slide Trail. I recommend taking the trails in this order because it will allow you to go uphill on the roughest stretches of San Pedro Mountain and downhill on the steep stretch of Highway 1 between Devil’s Slide and Pacifica. (Rough roads are much gentler on the spine uphill, and it’s easier to share a busy road with traffic when you’re going faster downhill.) After returning to Pacifica, you can either take SamTrans to BART or ride back home. Here’s a recommended 26 mile route to Devil’s Slide’s southern trailhead.

Landslides, earthquakes, and storms ended the trail’s previous lives as a highway and a railroad, but, for now at least, its current incarnation as a trail is a wonderful experience. Whether or not you’ve been through Devil’s Slide before, the trail is a gorgeous ride, and a new trail is always an opportunity to see even a familiar place from a fresh perspective. Slide⎯and ride⎯down to Pacifica, and check it out.

Brian Coyne is a PhD candidate studying political theory at Stanford and lives in San Francisco.